If Tiger Woods wanted to play down his recent change in marital status, the
'Welcome to Wales' gala concert at the Millennium Stadium on Wednesday night
was not the place to do it.

Ryder Cup week was always going to be tough for a recent divorcee who happens to be the most scrutinised sportsman on the planet. No other event puts its players’ wives and partners at the centre of proceedings on purpose, and no previous edition of the biennial has ever made more of their presence than the Welsh last night.

The intention was not to embarrass Woods, far from it. But when the players emerged onto a pair of Broadway show-tune staircases in black tie with ball-gowned WAGS on their arms, Woods’s solo status was impossible to ignore.

Looking like a waiter who had walked through the wrong door, he could not have seemed more alone.

The Americans were led out by Corey Pavin and wife Lisa, ‘The Captainess’ looking vampish in scarlet. They were followed by Phil and Amy Mickelson, the latter making her first public appearance since the Masters following a renewed battle with cancer.

On the opposite side of the stage even Colin Montogmerie and Gaynor, not strangers to marital issues themselves, managed to look the picture of a steady union by comparison.

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Woods was not alone in being alone - Steve Stricker is unaccompanied by his wife this week, likewise Graeme McDowell, who is yet to settle down and enjoying the delay by all accounts – but neither of these men carry the baggage that accompanies Woods.

Once the teams departed the concert was precisely the good-humoured welcome the Welsh government promised when they bid for the tournament.

Catherine Zeta Jones made a rare trip from Hollywood to open the event (though she appeared to have left her Welsh accent at home) and Katherine Jenkins added a dollop of glamour that included a rendition of the Love Theme from The Godfather, possibly in honour of the Molinari brothers.

It was possibly the campest declaration of national pride ever staged, with Dame Shirley providing a fitting finale after male voice choir 'Only Men Aloud' had almost opened the roof of the stadium with a Tom Jones medley.

There were stacks of children too, including a huge choir of local kids that suggests the Welsh tradition of choral singing is in safe hands.

In between actor Ioan Gruffudd delivered a resonant extract from Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood that reduced the 15,000 crowd to pin-drop silence in appreciation.

By the end, when the stadium rose to accompany the performers in a rendition of national anthem Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau, there was barely a dry-eye, even in the corporate seats.

It is remarkable to think that all this fuss is caused by a team golf match that 25 years ago barely registered with the wider public. It has been on an upward curve ever since the European team started winning, but Wales’s decision to turn this edition into a national event has raised the bar for all future hosts.

Determined to turn it into a Welsh Ryder Cup rather than a Ryder Cup in Wales, they have hitched the event to a government-backed drive to raise the country’s profile and prestige, as well as its tourism income.

Somewhere in the hall, a touch bewildered perhaps, were the men from Medinah, the Country Club outside Chicago that will host the 2012 edition, as well as the Scottish contingent from Gleneagles 2014 and the bidding teams from the six European nations hoping to host in 2018. They will all have left wondering where they can find their own Dame Shirley.